This collection was processed as part of the San Diego African American Archives Project, made possible by a grant from the
President's Leadership Fund.

Biographical Information:

The San Diego City Schools originally followed a neighborhood school policy, under which students attended the school nearest
their homes. Therefore, the schools reflected neighborhood segregation. While wealthier whites could afford to move to newer,
more expensive neighborhoods with better schools, the lower income minority populations remained in the older, less wealthy
neighborhoods with older schools.

The San Diego Unified School District had received many complaints concerning the obvious segregation of city schools. In
1963, the NAACP presented recommendations designed to reduce school segregation in the San Diego Unified School District.
Then, in 1965, the San Diego School Board adopted a resolution calling for the elimination of segregation in San Diego schools.
In 1966, the Citizens Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity confirmed that a racial imbalance existed. The school district,
however, failed to implement any of the Citizens Committee's 39 recommendations. About forty groups, unhappy with the district's
non-response, established the Interorganizational Committee (IOC) to make further recommendations. Larry Carlin, a teacher
and former secretary for the Citizens Committee, headed the IOC. In 1967, Carlin and several other parents active in the
IOC filed a class action lawsuit against the San Diego Unified School District for alleged inequalities of educational opportunities
for students of all ethnic backgrounds, formally titled
Kari Carlin et al v. Board of Education, San Diego Unified School District. The plaintiffs filed the suit in the name of ten children who represented four ethnic groups (Caucasian, African-American,
Chicano, and Asian-American).

A conflict between state and federal law prevented the case from moving forward. San Diego city school segregation was not
deliberate, it was the result of housing patterns. Federal law stipulated that segregation was illegal, but California law
maintained that as long as segregation was not intentional and facilities were equal, de facto segregation was not unlawful.
The decision to continue the Carlin case rested on the outcome of
Crawford v. Los Angeles Board of Education. In 1976, the California Supreme Court ruled that segregation, "regardless of its cause," must be rectified, thus making
San Diego's segregation illegal.

In 1975,
Carlin was reactivated. Two years later Judge Welsh found that twenty-three San Diego schools were segregated, and the Court ordered
the San Diego Unified School District to develop a detailed voluntary plan to alleviate racial segregation in these schools.
The plaintiffs had hoped for a mandatory plan. In 1978, Judge Welsh created the Integration Task Force to assess and monitor
the school district's progress. Annual hearings to evaluate the new plan were implemented, and additional hearings were also
set up to deal with any unforeseen issues that arose during the integration process.

In response to Judge Welsh's order, the Board of Education began improving existing school integration programs, and implementing
new ones. In 1966, the Board had created the Voluntary Ethnic Transfer Program (later called the Voluntary Ethnic Enrollment
Program, or VEEP), to improve the ethnic balance at predominately white schools. In 1974, the school board began promoting
VEEP through feeder patterns. A magnet program, set up in 1973, was meant to attract white students to inner-city schools.
Finally, the Race/Human Relations program, begun in 1972, designed and promoted multicultural awareness through workshops
and field trips for staff and students.

In 1985, the court decided that progress toward an acceptable ethnic balance had been reached, and therefore, it issued a
final order, which terminated the Integration Task Force, and ended the annual progress hearings. An annual written report
was to be submitted to review the district's progress. Although the Board's plan changed the ethnic composition of city schools,
very little social integration occurred, and an achievement gap still existed between the Caucasian majority students and
the minority students.

Access Terms

This collection is indexed under the following controlled access subject terms.

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Racial Isolation in the Public Schools. Vol.1. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1967.

U.S. Riot Commission Report. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. New York: Bantam Books, 1968.

Conditions Governing Use:

The copyright interests in some of these materials have been transferred to or belong to San Diego State University. The nature
of historical archival and manuscript collections means that copyright status may be difficult or even impossible to determine.
Copyright resides with the creators of materials contained in the collection or their heirs. Requests for permission to publish
must be submitted to the Head of Special Collections, San Diego State University, Library and Information Access. When granted,
permission is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical item and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder(s), which must also be obtained in order to publish. Materials from our collections are
made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the
materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials.

The
Carlin Integration Case Records include nearly three decades of court proceedings and research for
Kari Carlin et al v. Board of Education, San Diego Unified School District. The records include court transcripts, briefs and court orders, correspondence, maps and charts of ethnic imbalance, various
committee reports, court exhibits and depositions, declarations, interrogatories, enrollment statistics, student testing result
studies, trial notes, news clippings, and information concerning similar court cases. The collection is divided into two
series:
Research Files and
Court Records.

The
Research Files, dating from 1950 to 1997, include all the research materials necessary for conducting the trial. This series is divided
into five sub series:
General Files,
Similar Cases,
Data/Reports,
Reference Books, and
Maps. The
General Files (1965-1997) are organized alphabetically and contain correspondence, news clippings, court case volunteer information, "white
flight" research, and statements to the Board of Education by various organizations. The
Similar Cases files (1954-1997) are arranged chronologically by case. These files detail information about related integration cases in both
California and other states, such as
Crawford v. LA and
Brown v. Board of Education. The
Data/Reports sub series (1965-1996) is likewise organized chronologically, and contains extensive documentation of enrollment statistics,
various committee reports, district wide testing results, and VEEP and magnet program progress reports. The
Reference Materials files (1962-1979) include alphabetical reference publications regarding previous integration cases, law terminology, and legal
code. Lastly, the
Maps sub series (1950-1982), organized alphabetically, contains maps of district boundaries, census tracts, ethnic composition
of schools, VEEP schools, and ethnically balanced and imbalanced high schools, junior highs, and elementary schools. Most
of these maps are from the late 1960's and 1970's.

The
Court Records, dating from 1962-1997, include the official court papers created by the Carlin case, and documents court proceedings, actions
taken by the plaintiffs and defendants, arguments, exhibits, and the general legal process. This series is divided into five
sub series:
General Files,
Interrogatories,
Exhibits and Depositions,
Briefs and Court Orders, and
Transcripts. The
General Files (1967-1985) are organized alphabetically and include the chronological indexes to the major legal documents from the case,
along with the documents themselves, subpoenas, declarations, and travel documents. The
Interrogatories (1966-1970) are arranged by question order. These files document the pre-trial questions, answers, and attachments to potential
witnesses, experts, defendants and plaintiffs. The
Exhibits and Depositions files (1962-1983) include the various exhibits and depositions used during the official court hearings, such as declarations, statistics,
reports, and letters to and from school board personnel. These files are in chronological order according to court hearing
dates and by the order in which they were shown to the court. Several exhibits, however, are missing. The
Briefs and Court Orders sub series (1967-1997) document official court papers, such as petitions, temporary restraining orders, declarations, court
memorandums and requests, briefs, and judgments. This sub series is arranged chronologically. Finally, the
Transcripts sub series (1975-1992) include both the clerk's and reporter's transcripts of the hearings. These files are divided into
clerk's transcripts and reporter's transcripts, and are organized chronologically.